megankc101

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3 Code pictures

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Stop Motion Assignment

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Response to Fooling Reality: A Discussion with Janet Cardiff and George Burris Miller is Sculpture Magazine

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller met in college, and later in life, they came together to collaborate on an art project after their prospective careers morphed them into similar artistic interests. They both love sound, and its ability to transport audiences into a different reality or layer of perception. The pair made video or audio walk-throughs with immense sensory effects. the purpose was to give viewers (or listeners) a story.

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Response Jill Magid

I did my artist presentation on Jill Magid who is actually a Cornell graduate. Her work "interrogates structures of power on an intimate level, exploring the emotional, philosophical, and legal tensions that exist between institutions and individual agency.” She focuses on institutional structures and infiltrates the dynamics in them between law, rules, language and new media. Her artistic style is performance-based, with many of her showings being a live performance of an action breaking down these structures. For example, in her work Evidence locker, she developed a close relationship with the City watch Merseyside Police and Liverpool City Council’s citywide video surveillance program- the largest system of its kind in England. She was directed by the police to perform certain actions with her eyes closed on a public street, as she is recorded in her red jacket. Evidence locker is interesting because we are recorded every day, and don't even realize it. When we make art out of the parts of society that are often forgotten about, it brings the dynamics and truth to the structures behind our everyday.

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Shells Gif

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In Defense of the Poor Image Response

In the Defense of a Poor Image, Hito Steyerl, describes the process of an authentic image turning into a poor image. A poor image is described as one with bad quality, resolution, and one that has been flattened, downloaded, and saved over and over again. At which point, Steryerl, states many would argue that this reused version may not even deserve the title of an image, “it is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.” However, as the image captured in the first place was made as art, it can also be argued, that its degraded forms were part of the process and are part of the art in itself. Steryerl points out that there can be beauty in the blurry, destroyed image as well. Maybe more than a paper about “poor image” I think Steyerl points more to people's perceptions of it that determine its quality.

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Week 6 Post

I decided to add color to my shell spectrum. I did this by using the brush tool and choosing colors that were already present within the shells to go across the rainbow from red to indigo. I still can’t decide if the color was added to the piece or taken away from it. The density changes in shells may depict a spectrum enough. However, as the professor mentioned, this first assignment is more for experimenting with photoshop, so I dont think adding the colors was negative.

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Final colorized Print (Spectrum)

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Week 5 Post

In the process of putting my spectrum together, and there are a few different courses of action I think I can take to mend all of my crops together. First, I was thinking of dispersing the crops from the density of shells in each one. So start with the crop where the shells are smaller and more spaced apart, and the last image in the spectrum will be all of the large shells overlapping and cluttered together. It will be synonymous with the dispersion of shells when waves roll them throughout the shore. I was also thinking of adding in color, to create a rainbow spectrum from the first image to the last. The shells are majority white, brown, and blue. But occasionally there is a very vibrant colored shell-like purple or orange.

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Favorite Crop

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Week 4 Post

I really like the way my scans of the shells turned out. It was interesting to go through the process of scanning the objects and seeing how the different placements of the shells on the glass changed the outcome each time. I was really happy with the objects I chose because each shell is different in its colors, textures, shape, and sizes. The variety in the material produced really vivid and beautiful scans. While I was picking the shells, I would purposely choose the most obscure-looking shells, which came in handy for this assignment. 

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Resampling, Resizing, Interpolation

Resampling is when you change the pixel dimensions of an image. This can degrade image quality because if you downsample that decreases the number of pixels in the image. However, if you upsample, that increases the number of pixels in the image. While resampling physically changes the number of pixels in an image, resizing will keep the pixel dimensions the same. 

Resizing is the process of changing the size of an image so it keeps the pixel dimensions the same but changes the size the image will print. This would adjust the width, height, and resolution per PPI and permanently change the size of the image file.

Interpolation is also a process of resizing an image, but it occurs when you resize or distort your image from a one-pixel grid to another. In other words, it's the process of finding out the unknown pixels of the image.

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Materials I chose and why:

I chose to use seashells and coral as the materials for my spectrum piece. I decided to narrow it down to objects that are connected to the ocean somehow. I spent a lot of time this past summer in the ocean because I lived in Thailand. One activity I did while abroad was collecting seashells and coral from the different islands and beaches I went to. I did this so I could remember my trip, and I also have collected sea glass and other shells since I was a kid. Growing up my mom called me a water baby because I would cry to go to the beach when I was a toddler. The only sports I ever did throughout my life were water sports, swimming, water polo, surfing, and scuba diving. And my first tattoo was an image of two crashing waves. I have always been super connected to the ocean and all of its creatures and beautiful nature. I care deeply about the environment and the health of the ocean. Additionally, for me, being near the water at the beach is the quickest way to bring solace and clear my mind. The shore is truly my favorite natural environment, and a way to spend my time when possible.

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Simulation and Simulacra

"...The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true" (Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulation")

Jean Baudrillard wrote Simulation and Simulacra in 1981, a piece that brought up revolutionary ideas for its time. The paper covers the new simulation theory, which states that everything we know as "real" is a figment of higher technology. Although the text was sometimes difficult to digest, with one sentence having 30 different possible parallels or meanings, simulation and Simulacra was one of my favorite texts read thus far in Introduction to Digitial Art. Baudrillard asks the question of, what would happen in a world in which we were denied access to reality and only lived in simulation. The readers see through her analysis, that this scenario is similar to the world we live in now.

A concept talked about in the text was hyperreality, which is, "the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map," (BUDRILLARD 1981).

The simulation theory is of even more discussion now in 2022, with the world's most renowned scientists supporting it and Elon Musk even stating there is a large possibility that reality as we know it is just a simulation. The scary part of the theory is that it is unprovable, if there is technology controlling us right now, we would never be able to reach the controlling powers' level of advancement to realize it. If we are able to create sims and the metaverse, it seems plausible, that reality as we know it could be one big video game.

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Week 3 Post

Previous to this course I have never used Adobe Photoshop, but I have had many situations in my life where knowledge of the skills would have been helpful. Upon downloading adobe and exploring the different tools, I was not expecting the software to be as confusing as it is. For such a renowned, universal platform I would expect the usability to be more accommodating, especially since older generations who are not as technologically savvy are using it. There are so many layers to photoshop, and one wrong click could change your entire piece. It is very tedious, but also since it is just in the beginning stages of use, I may not be used to it yet.

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Week 2 Post

This week we started collecting materials that we will be using to scan and incorporate into our first assignment of spectrum pieces. I have a few ideas about which idea I want to pursue. Currently, I’m thinking whether sea glass, shells, sand, jewelry, or hair stuff (hair ties, accessories, hair from the drain/brush/etc). I think the process of collecting and deciding which item I want to use will be interesting because I have different courses of action I can take to obtain the different objects. My personal favorite is the sea shells because it has the most meaning in my personal life. 

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Week 1 Post

I am excited to start the digital art course at Cornell. I have not taken an art class yet in college, because I am a communications major and it is pretty difficult to get an art class on your schedule if that is not your major. In high school, I took multiple art classes a semester and was in both honors and AP art, my mother was also an art teacher at my school, so it was sad to stop art cold turkey when I came to college. This class is an exciting jump start back into art, but in a college setting where the other people taking the class are interested in the subject and the material is more thorough. I’m interested in learning about digital art, because I love graphic design, and also I have been getting into creating my own electronic music at home, which this class might touch on.